AFTAs 2020: Best IT Team (Sell Side)—Deutsche Bank

Over the last year, Deutsche Bank formed a new Strategy and Innovation Network (S&IN) team as part of its wider technology, data, and innovation strategy. The S&IN group, alongside the bank’s operations and know-your-customer (KYC) teams, has spent the last 12 months sourcing, evaluating and adopting new technology solutions with the potential to modernize Deutsche Bank’s business, operations and IT infrastructure, an initiative that proved pivotal to the bank landing the win in the best IT team (sell side) category in the 2020 AFTAs. 

The S&IN technologists work with both internal stakeholders and external innovation teams, including early-stage startups, venture capital firms, academic institutions, regulators and large-cap technology companies, such as Google Cloud. The bank’s innovation team has been working on several tech projects, including an adverse media screening platform for KYC, a testing environment, and a solution for managing technology ideas submitted by individuals within the bank. The KYC solution uses artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce the number of false negatives being flagged to portfolio managers or risk management teams. It went live in November and has so far reduced false negatives by 50%, helping users to consume the most important media events. 

The testing environment was developed last year to enable Deutsche Bank and its partners, such as startups, to test solutions in the environment. The testbed is managed in an external network to avoid any risk of interfering with the bank’s internal IT stack or client data.  

In June, Deutsche Bank also went live with an idea box solution that allows staff members to submit and collaborate on ideas for a technology project. Using the platform, an idea can be voted and commented on, and those with popular engagement can be put forward to be developed. 

Joerg Landsch, head of innovation for the Americas at Deutsche Bank says that since the summer one in every three employees at the bank using the portal has either submitted an idea, commented or voted on one, or volunteered to help with a tech project via the idea box. “We have seen a lot of ideas on that platform, with several now in implementation, along with a growing community of volunteers,” he adds.